Wednesday, 4 September 2013

Challenging Reality with Plant Allies: The Return of Graham Hancock

Challenging Reality with Plant Allies

The Return of Graham Hancock

An approximate transcript of London Real: Graham Hancock
interview

Graham Hancock: (Background on latest novel War God):

In 1519
Spaniard Cortes sets upon Mexico with 490 men on 11 ships after gold. Human sacrifice was the central
activity of the Aztec empire, knights with a code of honour trade for warfare
from childhood. Aztecs could put 200,000 men into the field.
The Spaniards were cruel, callous, single minded men and balls of steel. The
Spanish had been in Cuba since 1492, time of Columbus with a couple of tiny
expeditions to the mainland. In 1518, 110 men, 16 cavalry in 3 ships took a
savage beating from the Maya, another indigenous people of Mexico. Aztecs and
Maya stone weapons, Spanish metal weapons.

The
Spanish had great self belief having come through 700 years of war with Islam
and driven the Moors out of Spain. They were hungry for gold, having found
little on Cuba or Hispaniola. 2 years of war before Cortes defeated
Tenochtitlan, the capital city of the Aztecs.

18:15 mins. Turning point in human history:

Spanish
and Aztecs believed in super natural forces; Aztec Emperor Moctezuma was in
‘communication’ with the entity Huitzilopochtli (Hummingbird), War God of the
Aztecs and Cortes with St. Peter; spiritual forces at work behind human
history.

Fiction:
complete liberty for the author. If you write alternative history, expect
everything you say to be turned over forensically by hostile academics. For my
non-fiction I had to lay out my facts and references, writing increasingly
defensively, I had to up my game yet perhaps, for me, less adventurous books. I
want to explore in an adventurous way and fiction gives me a license to do
that.

Hancock: That’s not my role. If you enter the peer review process, then you
become one of them... I try to play by their rules, but you try to get an
article published in an archaeological magazine which suggests that the origins
of Egyptian civilisation may be more than 12,000 years in the past and I
guarantee you, it will never happen... the club by definition does not believe
in alternative history. The only way is to appeal directly to the public. The
mainstream magazines consider me the devil incarnate. The British Museum
refused to allow a TV station to film with me inside the British Museum.

When writing about states of consciousness, it was necessary for me to
experience altered states of consciousness, which is what drew me to ayahuasca
and the Amazon. There are interesting things to do to challenge us and I would
rank ayahuasca amongst the most challenging thing to do, not for everyone and
it is an extremely seriously matter. It will profoundly challenge you about the
nature of reality and yourself

Rose: 29:00 mins. What is the current state of the union when it comes to the
world’s acceptance of psychedelics as important medicine or plant allies?

Hancock: Considerable progress in the last couple of years. Some psychedelics,
such as psilocybin, are being tested in clinical trials as a possible cure for
depression; dealing with anxiety about death for terminal cancer patients. The
therapeutic benefits of psychedelics are being reluctantly recognised by a
medical establishment scared off for decades, because of that evil and wicked
enterprise called the war on drugs, which has denied us the benefits of these
extraordinary agents of consciousness change. The objective is to find
therapeutic benefit of LSD or psilocybin. I would like to see it go much
further than that, but I recognise that important first step. These are
powerful medicines with enormous benefit if used in the right setting with the
right intention.

31:00 mins. ...Psychedelics offer us the opportunity to explore the issue of
consciousness itself and to investigate the nature of reality. We think we know
what reality is, but all we know is what we've been told reality is from our
childhood onward... right now in Western technological societies, the idea is
reality is (this stuff... Hancock knocks the table.... matter) material
things.... all aspects of reality may be reduced to matter or the spaces between
matter, but that is not a fact. That is just an idea about the nature of
reality.

Psychedelics
offer the opportunity to test and investigate that idea much more deeply and to
explore paranormal experiences. It is difficult to set up a test for paranormal
experiences, but with psychedelics you can do that. You can begin to compare
between different volunteers.

Rick Strassman ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Strassman
) at the University of New Mexico repeatedly found evidence that challenged the
materialist view of reality and encounters by the volunteers with what appeared
to be intelligent non-physical entities; so many of the volunteers 'returned'
with a haunting phrase from the entities: "We’re so glad you’ve discovered
this technology. Now we can communicate with you more easily."

Suppose DMT is a technology for talking with intelligences from other
dimensions. It’s great if we’re researching the therapeutic qualities of
psychedelics, but my goodness, let’s also use them to explore the nature of
reality. Quantum physicists are open to the idea there is more than one
dimension, perhaps inhabited by intelligent beings. If we think we can learn
from other cultures in this level of reality, how much more may we learn from
the inhabitants of other dimensions. It is not belief; it is hypothesis worth
testing with a substance like DMT if we can get rid of this paranoia, this fear
of altering consciousness which irrationally drives our society to acts of
incredible stupidity.

Rose: 34:42 mins. Part of the reason I have Patrick here is because I don’t
think you have any history with psychedelics and represent those who perhaps
find this matter ridiculous, scary, not provable...

Vickers: Mankind is obsessed with not just being here for a given period of
time, looking for a deeper, more meaningful purpose; looking to religion,
reincarnation... I wouldn't say clutching at straws, but, looking for answers
other than a bleak alternative...

Hancock: I would say the person who believes there is nothing beyond this life
is the one actually clutching at straws, because that is a hopeful and positive
position to have. It is much more worrying to know every action, very thought,
every second of your life counts in the much longer term; every error and
mistake may have massive implications throughout eternity and infinity.

Vickers: Doesn’t that sound a bit like religion?

Hancock: Of course. Religions come fundamentally from visionary experiences;
Moses in front of the burning bush, St. Paul on the Damascus road, prophet
Mohammed shivering in his cave meeting the entity his construes as the angel
Gabriel. Scratch the monotheistic mainstream religions and you’ll find
shamanistic experiences and altered states of consciousness overlaid by
bureaucracy, power hungry priests, rabbis and mullahs who’ve imposed social
structures upon it. Until you’ve had experience of this (psychedelic) you are
not in a strong position to suggest the experience is just wishful thinking

Vickers: But, it comes down to personal experience; it can’t really be
quantified.

Hancock: That’s my point. I think it could be. Psychedelics, particularly like
DMT, in a matter of seconds you are going that rocket ship to other side of
realty. That allows for controlled investigation. Do volunteers on DMT return
with novel information? I would like to see rigorous scientific study. It’s an
ideological issue, deeply rooted in our society that prevents us from doing
this. It has resulted in the mobilisation of a great deal of public money and
large agencies against the war on drugs persuading us it is wrong to alter our
consciousness in these ways.

Vickers: You’re of the view that it is a sovereign right to do whatever you
want to your own body...

Hancock: .... to your own body and your own consciousness. Yes, your own
sovereign right. It is important to make a distinction between behaviour that
affects others negatively for which we have plenty of criminal laws and actions
which relate totally to our own body and consciousness.

Vickers: There’s stuff that falls slightly in the grey there.

Hancock: Not really.

Vickers: What about health care? Why should my tax dollars help someone who’s
wrecked their body through heroin addiction?

Hancock: So why are your tax dollars used to help somebody whose life has been
wrecked by alcohol or cigarettes?

Vickers: 41:11 mins. I agree the way the chart has been drawn up is wrong;
alcohol is fine and acceptable and marijuana is not. We had Dr. Nutt on who
made perfect sense...

.... I accept the way we have quantified and categorised drugs is ridiculous.

Hancock: ... or paracetamol that kills about 3,000 people a year.

Vickers: Regardless, there are issues with big business and Big Pharma, grey
areas the way these drugs cause issues in society...

Hancock: .... then you are getting into social engineering on a large scale.
Lifestyle: are you going to deny medical care and discriminate against
unhealthy lifestyles, those overweight? Since we don’t do that for all those
other things, it seems to me very odd we discriminate against consciousness
altering drugs.

Vickers: .... but, a line has to be drawn at some level...

Rose: .... and I agree with that, and this will have to be continued... I only
have a few minutes here. The core ownership of your own body is very
important...

Hancock: If we can’t make decisions, right or wrong, about our own bodies, our
own consciousness, there is something fundamentally wrong with society and it
poisons and taints every other aspect of what that society does, and if there
some social costs from allowing that freedom, I would welcome those social
costs because the freedom itself trumps that; a society that tolerates adult
sovereignty. This is a very important principle. Look at the vast social costs
of driving cars, but nobody questions that.

Vickers: That’s a fair point.

Rose: Do you think because you’ve had these (psychedelic) experiences, you are
more open to personal sovereignty than in your younger years, before you had
such experiences?

Hancock: Yes. There was a time in my 30’s when I felt drug laws made perfect
sense. Now, to me, they are a gross abuse of human rights, they are so
patently, obviously wrong. Like laws against witchcraft used to exist and are
wrong or criminal sanctions for being gay... these were wicked and terrible
laws. I hope the time will come when we will be relieved that we’ve got rid of
laws that penalise adults from making lifestyle choices about their own bodies
and consciousness.

Rose: As a society, when we demonise a certain group, we all die a little bit
inside.

Hancock: I think war on drugs has terrible consequences for our society in so
many ways, but fundamentally at the level of consciousness, it creates a dark
cloud over the society we live in and to lift that cloud would be an act of
great good.

Rose: Last time you were here you were so honest about your experience with
cannabis. You now talk about the benefits of a certain plant while no longer
requiring the benefits of this plant ally. It is a fantastic juxtaposition...

Hancock: It’s my right as a sovereign adult to make choices. As a result of
experiences with ayahuasca in late 2011, I interrupted a 24 year non-stop
cannabis habit. There was a time when I felt really good about it and I might
not have written my books of historical mystery, but my relationship with
cannabis became abusive and it ceased to serve me. I began to serve it. I do
not blame cannabis for this. I think it is a wonderful plant ally; it can be
used in a nurturing and beneficial way. Unfortunately, I wasn’t doing that and
ayahuasca helped me to see that.... for me it has been a great benefit that I
have stopped smoking cannabis. I still miss it. If I were confident I could
have a joint every 4 or 5 days of an evening, I would do that, but I’m not
confident I could do that. ı reached a point where I needed to stop and I did.

Rose: You’re no stranger to controversy throughout your whole career and we’ve
had Rupert Sheldrake on. What’s the current state of affairs between you and
the TED Talk people? They relegated you to the ‘naughty corner’ and called you
pseudo archaeology or pseudo science... I think they did you a big favour (Rose
smiles knowingly).

Hancock: There’s some really intelligent people involved with Ted, but the way
they handled this situation was really stupid. They were not reacting to our
talks, but to preconceptions they had about us. TED EX is organised at a local
level, not by TED central. In our case the subject was challenging existing
paradigms. TED gave them a license to put on a conference. TED do not vet the
concept of the programme at the outset. All the talks are put up on the TED EX
YouTube channel. Our talks were put up with the others, my talk attracted
132,000 views within 2-3 weeks. Rupert’s talk got huge numbers of views as
well. Scientists connected to TED asked how can you give a stage to Science
Delusion and War On Consciousness, ‘pseudo science’ challenging the existing
model of history... TED apparently got frightened. Everything they said about
our talks turned out to be false. Without watching the talks (Hancock’s talk is
about 18 mins.) they bounced out with preconceptions, stated them as fact and
then did a humiliating about turn unable to substantiate a single thing. End
result, on the naughty corner their statements are still there, now all crossed
out with our rebuttals as agreed with Rupert and myself. But, they would not
reinstall out talks on the main TED channel.
The internet does not like censorship; the spirit of the internet is freedom of
information. The idea that these talks could not be seen by adult rational
people was very annoying to a lot of adult rational people. The talks were
re-uploaded onto dozens of independent YouTube channels... it backfired
massively on TED.

Vickers: 0:55 mins. It makes them look very much part of the mainstream
conspiracy.

Hancock: Their brand is about free thinking and challenging the paradigm... The
fundamental issue, it rapidly became clear, the common point between my talk
and Rupert's talk (Dr. Sheldrake), which were otherwise very different...

.... was that we are both open to the possibility that consciousness may not be
localised to the brain, but the brain may be a vehicle, a transceiver of
consciousness, rather than a generator of consciousness, and that idea of the
non locality of consciousness, bumps up against a fundamental dogma of the
small group of materialist scientists who advise TED. A materialist is someone
who believes everything is reduced to matter including consciousness.

Vickers: At the moment it is a theory, not something that can be proved at the
moment.

Hancock: The non locality of consciousness is, indeed, a theory as is the
locality of consciousness. The notion that consciousness is an epiphenomenon of
brain activity is not a fact. It is an idea worthy of exploration. He point is,
we don’t really know what consciousness is and that conflicts with materialist
dogma. Materialist dogma is the death of science. Science should remain open
minded and inquisitive on unsolved questions and should not be in the business
of persecuting and shutting down those who seek to enquire into those
questions.

For a very long time we had the Ptolemaic model of the universe; the earth was
at the centre. The sun, planets and all the stars evolved around the earth –
you just had to look up at the sky and see the sun was going around the earth;
it was such an obvious idea. Those who held an alternative idea that actually,
the earth, the planets, were going around the sun, were at risk of their lives;
they were burnt at the stake... Giordano Bruno: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno.

Gallileo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei
.... was shown the instruments he would be tortured with unless he accepted
that the earth did not move and he recanted at the last moment and said OK, it
doesn’t move!

It’s the same issue with consciousness right now. Efforts are made by
materialist science to deal with anomalous evidence. For the Ptolemaic model
they invented new epicycles that would explain away anomalies and now we have
anomalous evidence on telepathy...

Vickers: What is the drive behind the status quo?

Hancock: There’s a feeling of safety in the status quo, ego and sense of self
and place in the world become invested in particular ideas. They take on a
monumental power and strength. Those ideas in leading religions led Christians
to burn individuals at the stake; Muslims to stone women to death, leading
Israelis to take back the Temple Mount. They are all ideas about our place in
the scheme of things; ideas so powerful they lead people to kill. In War God
two people believe they are doing the will of their God leading them to kill;
no evidence, no proof, grounded in nothing, but ideas are extremely powerful.
We must step back from what we were taught in childhood, always keep an open
mind.

Rose: This book is a metaphor for what’s going on right now.

Hancock: Indeed, the world is full of religious conflict. People, in the name
of ideas, are doing the most horrendous things to each other. The world is
filled with hatred, fear and suspicion. These religious buttons are being
pressed, when you get down to it, we are all members of the human family; there
is no difference between us. we all have hopes, fears, ambitions, our dreams,
we all want to see our children grow up to live secure and interesting lives, a
roof over our head, experience love and joy. Those are fundamental uniting
characteristics of the human creature and we artificially divide ourselves on
the basis of religious dogma. That is why adult sovereignty over consciousness
is such an important issue... get away from these structured that have
enchained our minds for so long.

Rose: You write, travel a lot, speak at conventions... what’s the most
difficult thing about what you do professionally? You are the defacto
spokesperson for the psychedelic movement in the UK to a certain extent whether
you wanted that or not...

Hancock: That would be an honourable title if that were true... I try to speak
out for cognitive liberty, the right to think freely, to explore our own
consciousness and that includes, if peripherally, psychedelics. My primary
issue is freedom of consciousness.

Vickers: Well, you’ve convinced me if that helps. It seems like a fast
turnaround, but that argument was compelling.

Hancock: I feel blessed to have had the opportunities I’ve had. I won’t pretend
every moment is absolute bliss... there must be periods of public speaking and
then there’s periods of retreat. I love what I’m doing. The young people today
put in huge hours of their time working, as if the employers own your soul as
well those hours of your day... I feel lucky for my chosen course. I don’t feel
lonely, I get engaged in the story I’m writing.

Vickers: The one constant of the guests we’ve had who are passionate about
their work do not view it as work and time flies by...

Rose: What is next for you?

Hancock: War God is the first of 3 novels. I like writing female characters.
Then, completion of my first novel Entangled. Then a sequel to Fingerprints Of
The Gods, provisionally called Magicians Of The Gods. There is new evidence now
allowing us to reopen the case for a lost civilisation... between 12,000-13,000
years ago the earth was hit by a comet. Geologist know about 12,900 years ago,
coming out of an ice age, it went dramatically back into a deep freeze. Animals
went extinct and we lost a whole civilisation. There were survivors who settled
in places like Egypt, Mexico and Peru passing down traditions and wisdom as
they were able to preserve. Fingerprints sold about 5 million copies around the
world. My job now is to deliver a huge dossier of evidence to them to they can
argue about the truth of history.

Rose: You are 62 now. At what point to you start thinking about your legacy?

Hancock: I don’t know what’s to come. I’ve learnt important lessons in the last
decade. Tried to change my life, to be positive and nurturing instead of
negative, arrogant, harsh; often unkind. I want to look back and think on
balance I did good rather than harm, everyday to be grateful.

Rose: To the children, maybe a 20 year old, what do you say now?

Hancock: We are physical creatures and it’s really tough if you don’t have a
roof over your head, or can’t cloth and feed yourself adequately. So, it is
important to pay attention to earning a living. Try to find a way of doing
where you don’t have to sacrifice all your dreams. Make your dreams work for
you. Don’t let the dreams go. Try to integrate your dreams into your career.

Vickers: Amen!

[Discussion on book shop distribution, Kindle books etc... ]

Rose: We’re talking about sovereignty over our own body. Is there anything
collectively we can do?

Hancock: It’s a whole range of things. Be more vociferous to our members of
parliament. Tell them we object to the drug laws. Encourage them that a change
is necessary. We live in a society where people are afraid to talk openly on
this issue. That tells us something about the kind of society we live in. Can
we have the courage of our convictions?

Rose: Do you have a take on Snowden case and surveillance?

Hancock: I detest surveillance; the way our fears are being manipulated to
allow the big dominant state to assert its controlling fingers into every
aspect of our lives. Nothing good is going to come out of that. We are going
down a very dark road when we tolerate that. Yes, there are costs when we
reduce surveillance, but those costs are worth paying. We should not sacrifice
our freedom and where is it going to lead? We empower these big bureaucracies
more and more as we give them the right to investigate and enquire to every
minute aspect of our lives. Where will it lead 10-15 years from now? Do we want
George Orwell’s or 1984 or do we want to live on Aldous Huxley’s island which
was a much more interesting place to be?

.... if we are to move forward as a species we need to let go of old ideas like
nationalism, that our loyalty belongs to a particular nation or government
which by chance we happen to be born into and move forward to communities of
ideas, of free sovereign individuals who join together in groups around
positive and worthwhile ideas... that’s what the internet does and allows, and
it is going to reshape the world. Those structures that have been in place for
pretty much the last 5,000 years are nearing the end. A new structure is
struggling to be born and in the process there is this waking up of human
consciousness manifesting in different ways all around the world. We live in a
very interesting time. A time when we need to remember we are responsible for
ourselves and our choices. Nobody else, just us and, therefore, we need to make
the right choices.

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